1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a service station. More particularly, the present invention relates to the service station that cleans and seals the print head of a print module in a printing system (an inject printer) and converts the movement of the print module into driving force.
2. Description of Related Art
Following the rapid development of home computers and related peripheral products, different types of computer peripheral products have been developed to meet the demands of various users. The two major electronic products for outputting computer data are displays and printers. Many types of printers are currently available including, for example, laser printers, inkjet printers and thermal printers. Since inkjet printers are smaller and cheaper relative to the other types of printers, they have become one of the most popular printers.
The inkjet printing technique relies on applying a momentary pressure to the ink inside an ink reservoir or heating the ink to produce a thermal bubble in pressure so that ink is ejected from the ink nozzle. The ejected ink forms spherical droplets that attach to the surface of a print document. Hence, by controlling the action of each ink nozzle through controlling the inkjet chip as well as the horizontal movement of the print head and the vertical movement of the print document, ink droplets are guided to fall on the desired print surface location, thereby forming a sheet of text or graph.
In general, the colorful dots on the page of a printed document are defined by mixing three complementary dyestuffs including cyan, magenta and yellow (CMY) together in suitable proportions. Since mixing cyan, magenta and yellow dyestuffs together cannot produce the color black, most color printers have an independent chip for processing black color. In other words, a color printer must incorporate a color subtraction module with color dyes including cyan, magenta, yellow and black.
In general, most inkjet printing systems also incorporate a service station for cleaning and sealing the nozzles on the print head of a print module after each printing job. The service station normally includes a wiper. Some service station may additionally include a sealing cap. The wiper is used once in a while to remove the accumulated ink (residual ink) and dirt from the area around the ink nozzles of the print head. The sealing cap seals off the nozzles when the print head is not in use so that the ink within the nozzles is prevented from drying up and hence blocking the nozzles.
FIG. 1 is a perspective view of a motor-driven wiper and a sealing cap for a conventional service station. As shown in FIG. 1, the service station 100 comprises a housing 102, a wiper 104, a cap 106, a base 108 and a stepping motor 110. The base 108 is formed inside the housing 102 and driven by the stepping motor 110 and a driving mechanism (not shown) to move linearly along the Y-axis of the housing 102. Furthermore, both the wiper 104 and the cap 106 are also simultaneously driven by the base 108 to move linearly along the Y-axis of the housing 102. After a printing job, the print head (not shown) of the print module will return to a position above the housing 102 of the service station 100 so that the nozzles (not shown) on the print head are positioned on the linear swiping pathway of the wiper 104. Therefore, the motor 110 driving the base 108 also moves the wiper 104 linearly to scrape off any residual ink on the nozzles of the print head. In similar way, the motor 110 also raises the base 108 up through a driving mechanism such that the print head is tightly covered by the cap 106 to prevent the ink from drying.
The conventional service station uses the rotary action of a stepping motor and the linear motion of the print module which is to print ink on plain paper or the like to clean the nozzles and seal the print head. However, it is simpler and costs less to drive the service station using the linear motion of the print module because no electric motor and associated control circuits required in the present invention.